Things are falling apart in the last installment of Pullman's latest trilogy, the second of Philip Pullman's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a energized and tilted version of our own. Organizations are weakening, or restructuring themselves along novel and disturbing lines. An hidden force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; at the same time, "wealth is decaying, and no one knows why". Power is draining from governments, and gathering in the offices of religious leaders, the vaults of business empires, the control of crowds. "An element is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a watchful eye on the ancient paths from his place in an city cafe. "Aspects we thought were stable and solid are deteriorating and failing."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Precisely what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the mystery that propels this final volume, which resumes where The Secret Commonwealth left off. This is, by all accounts, the author's last venture into the intricately constructed, endlessly enchanting universe he first unveiled 30 years ago, with the release of His Dark Materials. It's a domain whose terrain aligns with that of our world, but whose history diverges and shifts with ours; where the people look and reason and behave like us, but are paired by daemons, essences in creature form; where the skies are teeming with sorceresses and gryphons, but below, buses are taken and beverages is sipped, and middle-aged academics carry fancy shopping bags. Lyra, whom we first encountered as a young girl in the first trilogy, and then revisited as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, the introductory book with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still distinctly the sharp and determined heroine of the earlier books, but more mature, more sorrowful, more careful, less sure. This circumscription is intensified by her separation from her daemon, Pantalaimon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which made him desert her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
His choice to go off in quest of that childlike part of Lyra which she appears to have shed (an trait which he represents as her "imagination"), and her quest to reunite with him, were the incitements of its predecessor, which chronicled the protagonist undertake a wandering journey across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with wonder and risk on the way. But from the outset, profound shifts were in motion, and malevolent elements at work. The Magisterium – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's masterfully eerie representation of austere, administrative malice – is under fresh command, and showing its strength. Lyra's uncle – Lyra's family member, who holds responsible her for his sibling's death – has manoeuvred himself into the position of leader of the authority's High Council, and is intent on using his recently acquired power to expand the institution's dominium. A key character, who saved young Lyra to security along a swollen Thames as an young boy in the prequel, is now an academic with a secondary role in espionage: he is assigned to the city to learn more about his aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and costly rose oil which appears in some way to be the origin of a social and economic disturbance spreading out from the region. The oil is viewed by certain groups as a commercial product, by alternate groups as a empirical or spiritual phenomenon, and by further factions – the zealous "men from the mountains" – as a wellspring of evil; an insult that must be destroyed. The issue of its source, what it stands for, and whether it should be removed or safeguarded is becoming urgent.
As in the original trilogy, the heroine's deeds, and her future, are revealed to be inseparably entwined with the fate of the realm
In its predecessor, these narratives ran broadly in side by side. In The Rose Field, they come together. Similar to the first trilogy, her movements and her fate are revealed to be inextricably entwined with the fate of the realm. Her personal quest to rejoin with her soul and recover her creativity becomes the central battleground in a larger battle with an authoritarian regime which, as these systems often attempt, is attempting to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the personal, resistant ways in which individuals can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The story begins with the unveiling of a series of strange openings in the fabric of the Earth's atmosphere: windows that appear to lead to other worlds. One such portal manifests to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The church, with the antagonist at its leadership, classifies these portals as a challenge to the religion's orthodoxy and sets out to eliminate them. As Lyra begins to turn away from inflexible rationalism and back to feeling, yet, her conviction that these places must be preserved – that their significance and what they provide is mysteriously essential – grows. "Cosmic particles, or rose oil, or the creativity, or the Rose Field, or whatever we label it," she says, "it is necessary." The setting for a philosophical conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Narrative Pacing and Protagonist Growth
At 640 pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
